THE HAVANA ROOM
Chapter One
BEGIN ON THE NIGHT that my old life ended. Begin on a warm April
evening with a rumpled thirty-nine-year-old man stepping out of his
cab at Park Avenue and Seventy-seventh. Manhattan steams and rumbles
around him. He needs food, he wants sex, he must have sleep, and
he'd prefer them in that order. The cab speeds off. The time is 1 a.m.,
and he looks up at his apartment building with a heavy, encyclopedic
exhalation, which in its lung depth and audible huh can be found his
whole life-wish and dream, sadness and joy, victory and loss. Yes,
his whole life swirls in that one wet breath-as it does in everyone's.
The idea was for him to get home in time for his son's birthday party,
as a surprise. Even his wife isn't expecting him. But his plane was delayed
leaving San Francisco, circled LaGuardia endlessly, and then the traffic
into the city was slow, even at that hour, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway
full of bumping badboys in smoked-glass SUVs, off-peak tractor-trailers,
limos from hell. Now, planted on the pavement with his
suitcase, our man loosens his red silk tie and top shirt button. He's tired
of suc ... read full excerpt from The Havana Room ebook
